"You Were Never Really Here" review

Published: Jul 20, 2018

By Farid Matin

ICN- “You Were Never Really Here," directed by Lynne Ramsay is probably a new kind of “Taxi Driver” by Martin Scorsese. The story narrates a helpless and angry veteran who revolts for himself and his life to save the “last manifestation of cleanliness” from contamination.

The film reminds us the playing of Travis Bickle in Scorsese’s masterpiece. Due to its temporal connections and especially its visual features. The filming and scenes are extremely silent. A heavy silence that has captured all moments of the film.

Film brings you emotions. A silence that is most in harmony with the minimalist narrative of the film. A movie does not want to talk. The script is designed to be full of unspoken and dark spots the same Joe (Joaquin Phoenix) personality.

Movie does not speak. All of Joe’s conflicts with himself and his past are presented to the audience only and only in the framework of such short flashbacks. We could guess about them, but we could not be sure of them. The flashbacks that suddenly come out like a spark and disappear quickly, and this portraits the film’s editor which are visible. The graphic coordination of these "flashbacks" with some of the "present-day" plans is somewhat astounding.

And this reductive narrative comes with a director who follows the same path. The best aspect of the film is also here. The film's decoupage, in line with the narrative of the screenplay, is very minimal.

Both in terms of camera insertion and the film's frames, the close-ups and insets are just familiarizing us with the scene and they do not give us much information about their background.

There is a blur in the atmosphere. Such as the scene, that Joe takes his mother's body from the bed, or in the very basic plans of the film, which he breathes in plastic bags. This gives us a clue from his childhood. The decoupage works as a secret letter; the same as script and the thing happens in the flashbacks. And this harmony is one of the best features of the Ramsay’ movie.

48-year-old Scottish director, Ramsey, in his fourth feature film, has made something that he had always been fond of: people who had a tough childhood, and the same of his previous styles which included little dialogue, image and music, and using the audio effect instead of dialogue. Films are artistically and self-contained. The visual details are thought-out and dazzling, and we can stare for a long time with a whole set of frames and movie clippers. We can write a plenty number of lines about the relationship between different movie plans and the relationship between script and directing.

”You Were Never Really Here," is somehow like what Ramsey did in “We Need to Talk About Kevin”.

Omitting direct violence and show its effects. In the scenes of killing, we do not see anything about the killing process. The slices are arranged or the plans start from where the killing does not appear. We see the hand that has risen, but the moment of impact has been eliminated in the cut, and then we see the body that has fallen on the ground.

Probably, it is a kind of opposition to what Quentin Tarantino likes to do and fill the film with bloodshed. Ramsey moves his film slowly and does not want to create fake charm by dealing with the violence and tries to find other elements and things.

He makes brand new and creative things. Like the moment that Joe is lying with the murderer of his mother, they are singing on the floor of the kitchen. In this wonderful moment, the oppressed and the oppressor become one. This moment is unlikely to be removed from the memory of the audience in the short run. Or like the funeral sequence of his mother. Where Joe abandon the body of his mother inside the pond, and he, himself, slowly also goes down with her mother to the bottom of the water.

Joe cannot be fully understood. His past experiences have shifted to his current picture. Joe does not know what to do when he rescues Nina (Ekaterina Samsonov ) and does not know where to go. It's as if the biggest mission of his life has been accomplished and now he is empty.

Even though his greatest mission was the same. Something that dissuaded him from committing suicide. Now he is empty and can kill himself; he can give it a lasting suppression, this time, because he does not know what else he is making. He throws the gun and sets himself up.

The question that comes to the mind of the audience is that the thing happened in restaurant, was an imaginary suicide or a real one? The elements on the scene, the remnants of the restaurant, the carelessness of people, the glasses on the table, all show that this was an imagination. But Nina's dialogue, "Let's Go ... Good Day", reminds that such things have been happened just in dream and it's probably not a real suicide.